Twitter commentary erupts after Microsoft Ignite speakers described their physical appearance and race and noted the Microsoft campus was built on native land
where literally thousands of cultures have been eliminated by the most violent forms of conquest https://twitter.com/... Joseph Kahn / @josephkahn : I am a Korean American male wearing a white shirt with Tikka masala stains from lunch. https://twitter.com/... @nostrachavez : As @peterboghossian said, maybe @Microsoft should give all of that stolen land back to these mentioned tribes if they are really about that social justice life? Or is it all about empty, meaningless, virtue-signaling gestures in the end? Yea, probably the latter https://twitter.com/... Zeynep Tufekci / @zeynep : @JamesSurowiecki ... It's the classic “noble savage” trope. If there was more to it they would be talking reparations. It doesn't even occur to them there's a link, because once again, there are no human beings in this picture for them. Frank X. Shaw / @fxshaw : @balajis Some context. Inclusion matters to us. Our events have ASL, Captions, Audio Descriptions and starting last year, visual descriptions. These enable us to be inclusive of everyone including those who are blind or have low vision. Speakers chose if they want to do this. James Surowiecki / @jamessurowiecki : @chrislhayes ... Also, “time immemorial” is absolutely horrible, since it makes indigenous people sound like these mythical creatures who existed outside of actual human history. Antonio García Martínez / @antoniogm : When wokeness finally gets to Israel: I would like to recognize we are on land occupied by the Egyptians, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews, the Assyrians, the Seleucids, the Hasmoneans..are we still only in 160 BC? Fuck it, it's ours now. https://twitter.com/... Kat Rosenfield / @katrosenfield : if u really want to serve the visually impaired, stop letting your (dull, weirdly race-obsessed) presenters describe themselves & hire a novel-style narrator: “Dana, florid curls, breasts the size of grapefruits; Matt, who looks like he's never eaten a vegetable in his life” https://twitter.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : @donasarkar As a Black person, I'd find it extremely uncomfortable to start presentations where I'm likely 1%-4% of the demographic at the event by reminding people of my minority ethnic status. I also honestly don't think people knowing my race matters in pimping the latest Excel features. Dawn Neesom / @dawnneesom : Literally can't stop watching this particular #Microsoft virtue signalling madness. Hoping it's some incredibly clever spoof but...😬🤣#woke https://twitter.com/... Sam Harris / @samharrisorg : It seems like part of the rationale for this must be to help the visually impaired. But, whatever the intentions, this makes Microsoft look like the Cirque du Soleil of wokeness. https://twitter.com/... James Surowiecki / @jamessurowiecki : I don't understand the point of land acknowledgments like this, where the indigenous people whose ancestors owned the land you're on are still here. If you feel bad about it, give the land back! Don't keep it and say, “We know the land once belonged to you, but oh well.” https://twitter.com/... Noah Rothman / @noahcrothman : The project I'm kicking off for the next year is to give all of you permission to laugh at this objectively humorous display. It's not intimidating. It's absurdist. https://twitter.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : Truly curious about what the rationale is for starting a talk and introducing your race, gender and describing your outfit? Even if it's for the visually impaired, do they need to know your shirt is blue and you're Hispanic before one starts a tech talk on enterprise software? https://twitter.com/... Charlie Warzel / @cwarzel : what is interesting about ppl who are put off by or think this stuff is cringey is that most cultural norms are weird and arbitrary if you think about them a lot. is it weird/arbitrary that we sing the natl anthem before a bunch of ppl play sports? yes! so why is this bad? hmm https://twitter.com/...
@balajisBalaji Srinivasan
Context & Ripple Effects
The Ignite backlash lands mid-arc in tech's running argument over how much politics belongs inside companies. The year before, Basecamp banned societal and political discussion outright after an internal reckoning over a customer names list, and reporting had documented discrimination and isolation among women and workers of color across the industry. Against that backdrop, Microsoft's choice to have speakers state their race and acknowledge the campus sits on native land became instant ammunition for both sides.
Balajis Srinivasan's amplification turned conference staging into a viral referendum: critics like Peter Boghossian framed the acknowledgments as empty gesture, while others — including speakers themselves, mocked for lines like Joseph Kahn's self-description — showed how easily well-intentioned DEI ritual reads as performance when broadcast to a hostile timeline.
First-order effects
Microsoft takes immediate reputational damage on two fronts at once: the land acknowledgment invites charges of virtue signaling without material remedy, and the race self-descriptions invite ridicule that spreads faster than the intended message.
Second-order effects
Investor-side skeptics are emboldened — the same dynamic that drew swift criticism onto 8VC's Joe Lonsdale for his "woke" diversity tweets now runs in reverse, with each side citing the other's excess as proof, pushing other tech companies to audit whether their own conference scripts survive this treatment.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, companies face a structural fork between Basecamp-style depoliticization and DEI gestures backed by measurable commitments, because symbolic-only acknowledgments demonstrably generate backlash without buying credit with either constituency.
The trend: Corporate DEI symbolism is colliding with an organized skeptic audience on social platforms, forcing large employers to choose between retreating from political expression and grounding gestures in verifiable commitments.
Holy crap this is real! Is this the new normal in tech? Not just stating your pronouns but your race and hairstyle and whether you wear glasses and eye color? This is pure insanity. Normal people want to get as far away from this as possible https://twitter.com/...
Microsoft and Facebook must never be allowed to announce product launches on the same day, it might unleash a cringe shockwave that would cause the earth's mantle to collapse on itself
“My name is Antonio, and I'm a 6'1”, Class 2 Latinx, with an undercut, size 43 shoes, with 20 lbs. I need to lose, wearing whatever was on sale at Bonobo's, and I'm a senior product marketing guerrillero at Microsoft!"
@NuanceBro Many blind people make assumptions about how someone looks based on their voice, including mine. Describing yourself is a personal choice that helps prevent harmful assumptions, & I for one love when people offer visual descriptions. I did a video on this: https://www.…
Kind of weird how Twitter freaks the fuck out whenever extremely minor accommodations and acknowledgements are made to anyone that isn't an able-bodied white person. https://twitter.com/...
Before we begin this symposium, I'd like to acknowledge that we, Microsoft, have built this facility upon the graves of ancient peoples who we decimated with our brutally inconvenient Windows Security Updates. https://twitter.com/...
From thread by AGM. I think he's too optimistic though. The century is still young. And the Gods of the Copybook Headings may return. https://twitter.com/...
What we need to do is export wokeness to China so their next generation grows up too obsessed with apologising for millennia of Han supremacy to conquer the Pacific. https://twitter.com/...
@fxshaw I'd be impressed if you used AI to deliver a better experience for the vision-impaired, by auto-generating audio descriptions of scenery. They could hit a button to turn that on/off. But this approach is like mixing Chinese and English in a talk. Doesn't increase accessib…
Will Microsoft begin future conferences with a ritual incantation of every competitor they've copied over the years? “We stand on ideas copied from the Netscapes and the Notions...” https://twitter.com/...
I admire much of what Satya has done in turning around MSFT. So here's an alternate approach. First, donate to any group you feel obligation towards. Done. Now you don't need to be performative. Just point to it if accused of not doing anything. Actions > words.
Comms at Microsoft now apparently involve a lengthy land acknowledgement followed by speakers announcing not just their race but also their height and what color their clothes are. https://www.youtube.com/...
The mind-boggling thing is that some genuinely well-intentioned people genuinely seem to think that this sort of thing constitutes progress towards a better society. https://twitter.com/...
How does the two-century-old Western experiment in liberalism end? In blood and fire at the hands of fascists and autocrats? No. In declared races, genders and hairstyles at corporate marketing events. https://twitter.com/...
This is weird. What the settlers did to the Native Americans was messed up. It's a shameful chapter in our history, and worth teaching and remembering. But we live in a fallen world and most of us live where we do because of violence and cruelty done by and/or to our ancestors. h…
Whatever one's views are of these expressions of guilt over former landowners, it's gonna get legit complicated when they film from the Mideast or Europe — where literally thousands of cultures have been eliminated by the most violent forms of conquest https://twitter.com/...
As @peterboghossian said, maybe @Microsoft should give all of that stolen land back to these mentioned tribes if they are really about that social justice life? Or is it all about empty, meaningless, virtue-signaling gestures in the end? Yea, probably the latter https://twitter.c…
@JamesSurowiecki ... It's the classic “noble savage” trope. If there was more to it they would be talking reparations. It doesn't even occur to them there's a link, because once again, there are no human beings in this picture for them.
@balajis Some context. Inclusion matters to us. Our events have ASL, Captions, Audio Descriptions and starting last year, visual descriptions. These enable us to be inclusive of everyone including those who are blind or have low vision. Speakers chose if they want to do this.
@chrislhayes ... Also, “time immemorial” is absolutely horrible, since it makes indigenous people sound like these mythical creatures who existed outside of actual human history.
When wokeness finally gets to Israel: I would like to recognize we are on land occupied by the Egyptians, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews, the Assyrians, the Seleucids, the Hasmoneans..are we still only in 160 BC? Fuck it, it's ours now. ht…
if u really want to serve the visually impaired, stop letting your (dull, weirdly race-obsessed) presenters describe themselves & hire a novel-style narrator: “Dana, florid curls, breasts the size of grapefruits; Matt, who looks like he's never eaten a vegetable in his life” http…
@donasarkar As a Black person, I'd find it extremely uncomfortable to start presentations where I'm likely 1%-4% of the demographic at the event by reminding people of my minority ethnic status. I also honestly don't think people knowing my race matters in pimping the latest Exce…
It seems like part of the rationale for this must be to help the visually impaired. But, whatever the intentions, this makes Microsoft look like the Cirque du Soleil of wokeness. https://twitter.com/...
I don't understand the point of land acknowledgments like this, where the indigenous people whose ancestors owned the land you're on are still here. If you feel bad about it, give the land back! Don't keep it and say, “We know the land once belonged to you, but oh well.” https://…
The project I'm kicking off for the next year is to give all of you permission to laugh at this objectively humorous display. It's not intimidating. It's absurdist. https://twitter.com/...
Truly curious about what the rationale is for starting a talk and introducing your race, gender and describing your outfit? Even if it's for the visually impaired, do they need to know your shirt is blue and you're Hispanic before one starts a tech talk on enterprise software? ht…
what is interesting about ppl who are put off by or think this stuff is cringey is that most cultural norms are weird and arbitrary if you think about them a lot. is it weird/arbitrary that we sing the natl anthem before a bunch of ppl play sports? yes! so why is this bad? hmm ht…